Integrated circuits are subjected to various sorts of tests depending on the capabilities and requirements of the device under test. One such test is a “burn-in” test, which is the process of exercising an integrated circuit at elevated voltage and temperature in attempt to cause the circuit to quickly fail under high-stress conditions if particular defects are present in the device. Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) circuits and devices are frequently subject to burn-in testing. As memory speeds become higher with successive generations of technology, the ability to cost-effectively test these high-speed memories is becoming more difficult due to, for example, the need for high-speed test clocks to properly exercise the memory during burn-in. For example, in the case of a DRAM that has a retention time on the order of 5.0 microseconds (μs) at 140° C., the ability to effectively test the DRAM in a burn-in environment is controlled by the retention time of the DRAM cells. For example, in trying to test a single bank (e.g., 256 rows) of DRAM with a 300 ns tester cycle, a row (e.g., out of 256 in a bank) needs to be refreshed about every 20 ns in order to keep a single bank alive for a functional test. This means that the test clock must have a frequency of at least 50 MHz. Typical external tester clocks have frequencies more on the order of less than 1 MHz.
An alternative to increasing the clock speeds of external testers is to provide each device under test with an internal phase-locked loop (PLL). However, internal PLLs require a relatively significant amount of space on a chip, have relatively high power requirements, and have no means for efficiently dealing with very long tester cycles since it will generally require a delay mechanism that would clone the tester cycle and require unique devices, such as resistors, capacitors, low leakage and high threshold devices.